Come and get it!!

I've now added the C64 frame work (and sample app) to the downloads links on the right, scroll down a bit and you can't miss it!

So to recap what I've given you to play with in the framework....

Initialisation, mainloop and interrupts all setup and ready to go.

Production quality multiplexor

Three seprate switchable sorts.

Simple collision detection system

General sprite animation system.

Game based keyboard and joystick routines.

Simple player control framework.

Lightning fast 8x8bit multiply routine.

Simple random number routine.

Built in MMC64 FAT16 file loader.

Simple example platform engine showing the framework in action.

And there you go. As a little aside, the example also has a byterun decompression routine built in that you can use as well. Its all very simple really, but if you have any questions (or find any bugs) feel free to bug me about it.

Hope its of use to you and gets you going on your next great game!

MMC64 loader finished

I've now completed V1.0 of the loader complete with PRG file loading. Its shot up a little to about 900 bytes but it's now functionally complete. The only thing missing (which isn't vital just now) is error checking on initialisation. Its not important because if youve done a game thats supposed to load from an MMC card and its not there, then you have bigger problems! I've just ordered a retro replay so I can check all is well with that too (okay, okay...Coz it's cool...)

So tomorrow night I'll try and knock up a new downloads page somewhere and get all this up for you lot to play with. I'm not sure what I'll work on next but I like the idea of using the MMC card loader in the C64 version of XeO3.

I also want to do a proper Super CPU version of the loader so I can start playing more with that. I'd love to see how many software sprites I can pile on a bitmap screen, and I'd love to try that Lemmings idea too...

MMC64 Progression...

I've progressed quicker than I figured I would and have almost got files loading from it. It also supports directorys and will load a file from a full path+filename (just about). It only uses 8.3 filenames so far, but I suspect it will get expanded to do more in the future.

It takes arond 2k to add this although 600 bytes of it is data and a sector buffer. I suspect this will shrink a little once its all working properly, but to have fast access to 4Gb's of data is probably worth the extra space.

I also plan to put in a recursive directory search, allowing you to search for a game directory and then load from there. That means people won't be forced to put everything in the root directory.

I will also write a full Super CPU version allowing you to load megs directly into memory, and MUCH quick than a floppy could.

Life after floppies....

I've spent a little time trying to chat up my MMC64, but it just won't respond to my tender words, at least I wasn't having much luck until about 5 minutes ago. I was following the documentation completely - cut and paste actually - but with very little to show for it. It then occured to me that since I'm loading from it, it must already be enabled and ready to go. So I've dispensed with the full initialisation and jumped straight in with sector reading, and what do you know! It works! I'm not quite sure what would happen if you have to re-initialise the thing as I can't seem to get that going at all, but as long as the cards in and you've just loaded the main program from that, its all funky.

For a first pass, not having any error state is probably fine, after all its not like you have to swap disks (err...MMC cards) during a game or anything, and if you remove the card then its probably your own fault. Still sometime down the line doing a better fault tolerant system is desirable - but lets get the bugger working first! I still expect this to be released in V1.1 of the framework, but its good to see it shouldn't be too difficult.

I've also added a simple animation system to the framework even though I said I wouldn't. I figured you can always rip it out, and in the end the ones I write are almost exactly the same over and over again so sod it. This means theres now the multiplexor, a few sorts, basic collision, animation, joystick and keyboard input and a very simple test app - which is a good start. Actually, theres 2 test apps. The Frame work has code to bounce sprites around in a simple manner, and then theres the playformer framework which gives a little more realistic usage. Still the more the merrier.

I'll now have to do another web page to download all this rubbish, and expand my wiki page to have some simple documentation...and I mean simple...

C64 framework V1.1?

I've thought of one more thing I'd like to add, but its not a quickie by anymeans so I'll leave it till version 1.1 so that I can get this version released. After speaking about using the MMC card as a loader, I suddenly realised that it would be awesome to have a proper file loader built into the framework. That way these no excuse as to not use it, and it'll make development MUCH simpler. Simply bung your files onto an MMC card in a folder or something, then load them - how simple would that be! It might also mean we would start getting some more games that load directly from the MMC rather than floppy/tape, which would be very cool.

I also suspect V1.2 will be when I start to add remote debugging features through RR-NET. As I've mentioned in the past I do have the beginings of a remote debugger on the Plus/4 and would like to get that onto the C64 but using the ethernet adapter rather than the user port. Although since the upload/download part is prett much GetByte()/SendByte() I can probably have both in case people don't have an RR-NET. It would be good to get a proper devkit again as I was reading about the old PDS system I used to use and starte getting a little homesick for it...

You can read about it HERE if you wish although its in spanish. HERE'S a translated version via Babelfish. It really was an amazing little system and I miss it hugely.


Oh and as a little side note, I've managed to get WWW.XEO3.COM again. I'd let this expire and some bugger pinched it which is why I went to the .ORG, but I've now got it back again so I'm happy.

C64 framework and sample

I've now finished the sample app that I was doing for the frame work; well, as much as I intend to. As you can see its a platformer in bitmap mode, and you run around collecting the bombs. Its basically a simple version of the first level in bomb jack (without the baddies). It uses the built in player-2-sprite collision routine as Ive been lazy and done the bombs as sprites, but it does help to show how to use the framework better. Also remember that I've only really spent a couple of days on the sample, so dont expect too much.

I've done it in bitmap mode because platformers should never really be restricted by character count or colours, so having a full bitmap is nice. It also let me have a pretty background, although it turned out to be harder than I thought at the time. I had to rip the bitmap off an old Ballistix floppy and then I discovered that I had stored it compressed! So I then had to rip the decompression code from Ballistix into the sample. Still it was only byte run so it was easy enough.

Anyway, with this done, I now only need to clean both up, write some very basic doc's and then upload it somewhere. Perhaps someone will even finish the platformer sample... who knows... It would be cool if you did a built in MMC loader and you could load each levels bitmap from an MMC card really quickly. I think any games you do these days should take advantage of new tech that everyone's buying, and that in turn would help sell more and move things along. If nothing uses a new bit of hardware, no one will buy it!

Last chance for anything to be added though. I can't think of anything, but feel free to suggest. I'm not sure when this will get released, but I dont expect it to be long now. Hope you all enjoy it, or at the very least have fun looking though the source...

Am I done yet?

I have now added some basic gameplay keyboard routines and a sample collision detection routine. I stress these are samples and need to be adapted for whatever game you might end up writing.

So what do GAMEPLAY keyboard routines look like? Well it doesn't scan the full keyboard for a start - that takes ages. You basically list the keys you want and it'll scan for them and set a BIT somewhere for you to check in the gamecode. This means you do minimal keyboard reading and spend all your valuable CPU time doing game stuff.

And how about the collision code? Well it's basically the same as I had in Blood Money, and have in XeO3. If you imagine 2 spheres colliding, to work out if they've hit, you subtract the centers and get the distance between them, then add the radii together and if the total of the radii is larger than the distance between the centers, they've hit. I do basiaclly the same thing but with squares. Each sprite has a center point and I subtract them (one at a time - no Square roots here!), then I add the two X widths (from the center) and compare with the distances between the X centers. If the 2 widths are greater than the to centers subtracted, then we've hot on X, if so we do the same with Y. For a little more speed, the X centers are divided by 2 so we can get rid of the significant bit of X - one less thing to worry about. SO! The current setup consists of:

16 sprite bouncing around with 3 compile time sorting options.

1 player sprite being controlled by the joystick (in either port)

A gameplay keyboard routine

Some basic collision detection.

And there you have it. If theres nothing else I'll start doing a little game of some sort or other and when thats done, I'll release it. Not that I really need to do a game though, but it'll give others time to ask for additions while I'm doing it...

C64 Framework...

So what I'm thinking, is that I should write a very small, very simple game using the framework so that people see how you could modify it. Even if its not a complete game to be honest, just something really simeple where you run around and shoot things, or pickup things or something simple.

So no idea what I'll write... but something....simple.... This also means I'll add simple collision detection that you can butcher to do something else later.

if you have any ideas of simple games that'll not take long (and I MEAN won't take long...) let me know...

C64FrameWork: Holy smoke Batman!

I've now added the sort Dan used in Armalyte as well, so theres now 3 different modes there all available as an option for when you start your game. To select them all you need to do is change a single equate value (setting it to 0,1 or 2) and the code will build the correct version (Try doing THAT with in a monitor!).

In the case of randomly bouncing sprites Dan's clearly win's out even over my shiny new one, to the sum of 42 freely bouncing sprites all on a STOCK C64. Thats damn impressive I have to say. However, I'll emphisis that it really, Really, REALLY depends on the game and how your sprites are setup, banded, spawned, moved and all the rest - BUT with 3 separate sorts now here, you should be in good standing to pick the right one without having to mess around. The image shown here is actually the worst case (the red bar taking up top and bottom borders), normally it only takes up the lower border which is superb.

I'll also make the point that this is a frame work. Its NOT a finish bit of code. You should take this as a basic core, and shape it to target your game/applicate better. For example, if you want to have a 2 player game, you should modify the code to multiplex only 6 sprites, or if you WANT to multiplex 8 to allow for a player with multiples above and below again you should extend the code to do so.

The code is pretty well commented but due to a couple of bugs in SNASM (namely nested IF/ENDIF's dont work) I cant get the code fully auto generating yet.

I've also now added a player sprite which is controlable via the joystick and flashes away over the top of all the rest. So, barring anything else being requested (and I'll give it a couple of days) I'll write up some doc's and release it next week sometime....

Oh, and as a little aside.... when running this on a SuperCPU without even coding it in 65816 assembly, it takes up around 16 scans in total - including ALL the IRQ's....